The Age (Melbourne) July 6, 2002 Saturday
Insight: Public Good Versus Private Gain
Stephen Cauchi

The CSIRO is ditching public research in favour of lucrative consulting
work, and many of the old guard aren't happy about it, reports Stephen
Cauchi. Two years ago, Jonathan Shier and Geoff Garrett were plucked from
overseas to head the ABC and the CSIRO respectively. Like Shier, Garrett
- recruited from South Africa's equivalent of the CSIRO - has an ambitious
and extroverted style of leadership. That, coupled with budget cutbacks,
job losses and an upgraded focus on making money at Australia's pre-eminent
scientific research body, is bringing the critics out of the woodwork.
A CSIRO executive from 1981 to 1995, Max Whitten delivered a stinging attack
on Garrett this week in the journal Australasian Science (the article was
republished in The Age). Whitten accused Garrett of subverting the CSIRO's
traditional role of public research in favour of lucrative consulting work
for government departments and the private sector. Hence, research into
genetically engineered crops, with its promise of intellectual property
and revenue streams, is in; research into organic farming is out. The CSIRO's
National Awareness Program, which funded science programs for print and
radio, has also been axed. CSIRO staff refer to Garrett's style as "management
evangelism", a reference to his fondness for such phrases as "if it ain't
broke, break it" and acronyms such as BRAGS - "Brilliant Research and Great
Stuff!" They also recall a meeting in Canberra last year when Garrett jumped
up on a table in imitation of the school teacher played by Robin Williams
in one of his favourite films, Dead Poets Society. Garrett's record in
South Africa's CSIRO equivalent, CSIR, was what endeared him to the Howard
Government. Garrett enabled the CSIR to flourish in the difficult post-apartheid
times by increasing its external earnings through consultations. Similarly,
the CSIRO now has a formal target of getting 30 per cent of its income
from external revenue (half of which comes from commissions from government
departments and agencies). Australia's chief scientist, Robin Batterham,
is reviewing the formal target concept and is likely to recommend it be
scrapped. Given this and Garrett's declared aim of increasing the CSIRO's
income by 50 per cent, it is likely a greater proportion of revenue will
be derived from external sources. CSIRO old-timers such as Whitten fear
traditional CSIRO programs - everything from research into grain storage
to work in radio astronomy - will continue to suffer. After all, the CSIRO's
budget for research has already shrunk by a fifth.

"The indisputable facts indicate a serious loss of research capacity
within CSIRO," Whitten wrote in his article. "The promise of massive increases
in external earnings might have landed Garrett the job, but the strategy
could shift CSIRO from being a powerhouse for public-good research into
just another consulting firm."

Staff morale, says Whitten, is plummeting (a charge denied by
Garrett): half the divisional chiefs are looking elsewhere for jobs; internal
surveys reveal many top managers are stressed; new chiefs are only offered
three-year appointments. Garrett declined to speak to The Age, but in an
e-mailed response, the CSIRO insists that "public-good research is central
to CSIRO's mandate". Yet the organisation's own public statements indicate
a clear link between relevance and revenue. "Our goal is to grow total
CSIRO revenue by 50 per cent over the next four years as a metric for our
enhanced impact and relevance for the nation," it says in the e-mail. The
deputy chief of the CSIRO, Dr Ron Sandland, also told The Age: "The goal
of a 50 per cent increase in total revenue over the next four years (is)
symbolic of enhanced relevance and national contribution."

Contrast that with 1981, when Whitten started at the CSIRO. Then,
the external earnings requirement for his entomology department was 23
per cent. "I was told that was too high, I should reduce it," he says.
"In fact, I increased it."

While he says chasing external dollars is not new, public-good
research should be primarily that. Science should be regarded like education
or defence: something that is beneficial to the nation but whose benefits
are too widely spread for private industry to take on for themselves. Why,
asks Whitten, should the taxpayer be funding research intended to benefit
private industry? The CSIRO is quick to point out the commercial benefits
of its work, including public-good research. In May, John Kerin, chairman
of the CSIRO's stored grain research laboratory, released an analysis of
his department's work showing that each dollar invested in the laboratory
had returned more than $20 in benefits. Four other projects - robotic mining,
revitalising the landscape, road crack detection and bushfire control -
will generate benefits 100 times greater than they cost, the CSIRO says.
If the CSIRO's research is so lucrative, why is funding and external revenue
such an issue? "Sometimes the benefits are immediate, but sometimes it
can take quite a while," says Whitten. "You're talking about 10 to 15 years
between research and its uptake."

And, in these economically rationalist times, such benefits are
viewed sceptically. Graeme Pearman, chief of CSIRO Atmospheric Research
since 1994, says times have changed since Whitten was involved in CSIRO.
The community has failed to recognise the "breadth" of science's economic
contribution, he says. "There's a degree of scepticism there, says Pearman.
"Max has a fairly biased view about what is happening . . . it's Geoff's
intention to grow all of our potential funding."

Ironically, one of the CSIRO's sternest critics has been itself.
In February, a senate hearing in Canberra was read a CSIRO internal document
that said the organisation was "aloof, arrogant and unresponsive". The
agency's strategic action plan also described it as too hierarchical and
bureaucratic and overly focused on short-term revenue targets. It noted
that the CSIRO was no longer considered competitive in the international
labour market due to uncompetitive salaries and a weak Australian dollar,
and had less scope to do strategic research. These problems are not new.
A report in The Age in 1994 could have been written today. "CSIRO bears
a close resemblance to that other great Australian corporation, the ABC,"
wrote The Age's then science reporter. "Both are layered with discontent
. . . but most importantly, both seem to be increasingly motivated by the
corporate dollar."

The secretary of the CSIRO staff association, Sandy Ross, says
the tensions between public-good research and revenue-based research have
been around since the 1980s and are increased when funding becomes tight
- as it is today.

"These are issues that have been around a lot longer than Geoff
Garrett," Ross says. "The pressures have been on for the organisation to
expand its commercial income."

Nor is the CSIRO's boss, for all his radical, upbeat behaviour,
to be compared with the sacked head of the ABC.

"There are elements of truth to some of (Whitten's) statements
but there's no way (Garrett) is like Jonathan Shier," says one source.
"If you went out to the CSIRO divisions you'd get a much more mixed view
than what Max says."

In particular, staff and supporters alike believe the CSIRO has
to grow if it is to stay relevant. "There's a lot of common ground we have
with Geoff about that," says one former employee. And, Garrett aside, it
is undeniably true the Howard Government has cut the CSIRO's funding significantly.
In May, Prime Minister John Howard launched Brad Collis' history of the
CSIRO, Fields of Discovery, and told the audience he looked forward to
the day when the CSIRO could join the Australian cricket team as world
leaders. Fine sentiments. But since the Coalition took office in 1996,
the CSIRO has lost 12 per cent of its staff, from a peak of 7400 to 6400.
During the same period, it has lost a quarter of its budget relative to
economic growth. The CSIRO is budgeted to receive $639 million this financial
year - $12 million more than last year - but this 1.9 per cent rise fails
to keep pace with inflation and real GDP growth. Including external income,
the CSIRO has an annual revenue of about $900 million, which Garrett aims
to increase to $1.3 billion by 2006. The Minister for Science, Peter McGauran,
declined to talk to The Age but issued a statement supporting the government's
appointment of Garrett. "Dr Garrett was recruited to lead CSIRO through
a reform process. Both he and the board continue to have the complete support
of the Federal Government . . . the global economy of 2002 requires CSIRO
to be deeply engaged with industry both large and small."

The opposition science spokesman, Senator Kim Carr, says the CSIRO's
problems are not unique and Garrett is not to blame for the difficulties
the organisation is facing. "I think the problems go deeper than individuals.
The CSIRO is facing the same problems facing the universities and other
research agencies. It's too important to be played around with by governments
intent on privatising everything."

Stephen Cauchi is The Age science reporter.

***

2. CSIRO - strategically embedded in the bioindustrial-complex

(from the NGIN list June 2001)

Following on from the recent exchanges between Devinder Sharma and AgBioWorld
supporter, Dr Malcolm Livingstone
[http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/sharma2.htm],
it may be remembered that Dr Livingstone, a Plant Molecular Biologist
with CSIRO in Australia, angrily denied ANY connection with INDUSTRY.

DML: "OK first of all I am not part of the INDUSTRY.
I work for CSIRO (a publicly funded organisation with a rich history of
good science) and before that with the University of Queensland. I don't
know ANYBODY who works for agricultural companies and never have."

Livingstone's not knowing ANYBODY at all from industry might seem a
little surprising for a Prakash ally who it might be thought would be in
contact with quite a few like-minded AgBioWorld supporters.

To date, 3172 'Scientists In Support Of Agricultural Biotechnology'
have signed the Prakash declaration. A sizeable percentage of these seem
to be directly employed by the biotech industry, eg by Novartis, Dow, Pioneer
Hi-bred, BASF, Aventis etc. If you take a sample page such as that for
the letter 'L', where Dr Livingstone's name is to be found , you'll find
that employees of Monsanto alone account for over 10% of the declaration
signaturies listed.
[http://agbioworld.org/PHP/index_search.phtml?alpha=L ]

But let's assume that none of these industrially-linked like minded
individuals are among Dr Livingstone's correspondents, and that his professional/social
network has been limited exclusively to his places of work: CSIRO and,
before that, the University of Queensland.

CSIRO stands for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Reseach
Organisation. Note the "Industrial" bit. Although ostensibly "publicly
funded" CSIRO is, in reality, encouraged to get 30% of its funding from
buisness with the CSIRO top management encouraging its staff to go to 40%
(as a point of comparison, only about 10% of the funding of Europe's
leading plant biotech institute, the John Innes Centre, is thought to come
directly from industry). A CSIRO division like "Plant Industry" is organised
to reflect this, ie its research focus is conducive to industrial interests.

The following are excerpts from an article by Richard Hindmarsh in the
Journal of Australian Political Economy (No 44.), 'Consolidating Control:
Plant Variety Rights, Genes and Seeds':
http://www.biotech-info.net/consolidating_control.pdf

"These factors, in addition to IPR developments, coupled to the R&D
programmes of key Australian public sector research institutions like the
CSIRO and the Waite Institute which have long been aligned to intensive
agricultural R&D and agribusiness, are tending to generate convergence
between private sector and public sector plant breeding operators.
The CSIRO, in keeping with its position of being at the forefront of scientific
research, prioritised genetic engineering research in 1979. CSIRO
scientists have since been very active in the promotion of GE to the Australian
community, and especially to other scientists (Hindmarsh, 1996).
In addition, multinational companies are seen as the key avenue to theinternational
commercialisation of biotechnology products and research of both Australian
public sector institutions and biotechnology firms. A key programme to
bring the public and private sectors together has been the Cooperative
Research Centres programme introduced in 1990, as noted earlier.
The CSIRO has played a key role in these centres, and multinational companies
like Groupe Limagrain and Zeneca subsidiary Pacific Seeds have participated."

"...the indications are that a Byzantine web of formal contractual obligations
and informal connections has emerged between the CSIRO and other public-sector
agencies..., universities, small or new biotechnology firms (NBFs), and
multinational corporations."

Those listed by Hindmarsh as having direct connections with CSIRO include:
Agrigenetics, Monsanto, Rhone Poulenc and AgrEvo.

"...in 1998, CSIRO, with the Australian National University, announced
a five-year strategic research alliance to collaborate with AgrEvo
to develop "innovative enabling platform technologies"... The alliance
gives CSIRO ownership of intellectual property associated with the research
projects, while AgrEvo will obtain licenses for a range of crops including
cereals, vegetables, oilseeds and cotton. At the same time, AgrEvo
will improve its distribution of its agribusiness technologies to Australian
farmers through the CSIRO (CSIRO 1998a: 1)."

"With regard to insect-resistant varieties, cotton... Significantly,a
collaboration between the CSIRO and Monsanto has generated Australia's
first major GE commercial crop. The CSIRO licensed Monsanto's patented
Bt Cry IA(c) gene, the Ingard« gene, and inserted it into local varieties
of cotton, which are now sold by Cotton Seed Distributors as Monsanto's
PI Ingard« cotton.."

"...a long history of CSIRO collaboration with multinationals, its advocacy
of globalisation as a key avenue for Australian biotechnology, and its
increasing dependency upon industry funding."

Hindmarsh's article makes clear the huge extent of private-public sector
interlocking of R&D at CSIRO, which, as indicated above, has even formed
cooperative ventures with agTNCs, like Monsanto, and also does much collaborative
work with TNCs, eg Groupe Limagrain, Zeneca and Monsanto.

According to John Stocker, CSIRO's former chief executive, "Working
with the transnationals makes a lot of sense, in the context of market
access. There are very few Australian companies that have developed
market access in the United States, in Europe and in Japan, the world's
major marketplaces. Yes, we do find that it is often the best strategy
to get into bed with these companies." (Australian Broadcasting Commission,
1992).

While CSIRO is strategically embedded within the bioindustrial-complex,
Dr Livingstone's former workplace, the University of Queensland is, we
are reliably informed, inundated with scientists working in agbiotech,
who have taken out patents etc.

So if Dr Livingstone really has never known ANYBODY who has gotten into
bed with INDUSTRY, we can only assume that throughout his entire working
life he has been chained to his lab bench with a severe case of myopia
and a hearing aid that's permanently switched off. No wonder he's so cross.